my poor husband, a decent man, if ever there was one, allowed himself to
be robbed by a company-promoter called Despriol. You remember that empty
house, near Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau, which took your fancy yesterday, I
don’t quite know why? Well, that’s where Despriol and his wife lived, up
to fifteen years ago. Henriette Despriol was a charming woman; she and I
were great friends; and she used to come to the Logis when she liked ...
so did her husband, for M. de la Vaudraye was never happy out of his
sight; and I did not dream of suspecting him, for he struck me as a
good-natured, honest man and M. de la Vaudraye was careful to hide from
me the dangerous speculations into which his evil genius was dragging
him. Everything was discovered in an hour. Despriol took to flight,
after losing, or rather stealing, all that remained to us. We were
ruined.”
She paused and then continued:
“There’s worse than that. On the same evening, my dear friend Henriette
came and flung herself on her knees before me and implored me to give
her money to join her husband, who was in concealment in the
neighbourhood, and to enable them to leave the country and retrieve
their fortunes. It was a piece of brazen impudence; and I showed her the
door. Unfortunately, I left her alone, for a moment, in my bedroom. An
hour after, I saw that a box containing all my jewels had disappeared.
We rushed to her house: she was gone.”
“Did you prosecute them?”
“We notified the police, but they were never found. Five years ago, I
received a letter from Henriette in which she said, ‘The ten thousand
francs which my husband sent you this morning represent the value of the
jewels. It is the first money which we have been able to put by. I am
longing for the day when we shall be in a position to settle with you
altogether and when I shall have the right to beg your forgiveness for
all the harm that we have done you. Until that day comes there will be
no rest for your repentant friend.”
“And since then ...?”
“Since then, I have received another letter, a few months ago, in which
she told me that her husband was dead and that she was on her way to me
with all the money she owed me.”
“Well?”
“Nothing but lies! Nobody came. Do people like that come and pay back
the money they have stolen! No, they were a couple of thieves. You ask
anybody at Domfront about M. and Mme. Despriol: a nice reputation they
left behind them! If either of them thought of coming back here, they’d
be stoned in the streets! Henriette indeed! Why, I should spit in her
face, that I would, the sneak, the hypocrite!...”
She uttered those words with an accent of implacable hatred charged with
all the rancour of those fifteen years of poverty and privation.
Gilberte shuddered. The evil expression on that face filled her with a
sort of repugnance. Nevertheless, she took Mme. de la Vaudraye’s hand
and, raising it to her lips, murmured:
“You poor dear!”
And she did this not designedly, because it was Guillaume’s mother whom
she was conciliating, but from an undefined and all-powerful instinct
that compelled her to be kind to this humiliated and disappointed woman.
It was the same instinct which had guided her hitherto and which made
her still more attentive and affectionate in the days that followed,
notwithstanding a certain sense of constraint which she felt in Mme. de
la Vaudraye’s presence. She knew no greater pleasure than to smooth the
wrinkles from those sullen features at the moment when they were most
firmly set; and to do this she employed all sorts of childish rogueries:
“Come, try hard and laugh.... There, you have laughed!”
Mme. de la Vaudraye was touched by all this charm of manner. It made
her neglect the artificial plan of conduct which she had arranged to
captivate the girl: she forgot to conceal her faults, she even became
natural and spontaneous.
One day, after something that Gilberte had said, with a sudden movement
she drew the girl to her:
“Oh, my darling, what a treasure of a wife you would make!”
Gilberte smiled:
“Indeed! How do I know that you would have me for a daughter!...
However, we shall soon see ... perhaps to-morrow....”
“To-morrow?”
“Why, of course! Isn’t this the day when Guillaume is coming to the
trysting-place where I wait for him every day?”
“Guillaume? I had a letter from him this morning from Paris. Besides, I
know him; when he has made up his mind....”
Gilberte looked at her watch:
“Five o’clock. Suppose he were there now!... Ah, I have a feeling that
he is there to-day, that I shall see him!... Good-bye till to-morrow.”
She hastened away swiftly, leaving her companion speechless. Hope filled
her breast, a hope each time disappointed, but never discouraged.
“Mme. Armand is coming back alone this afternoon,” said the people at
Domfront. “What a hurry she’s in!”
She crossed the threshold of the Logis without stopping and went
straight to the summer-house. Her eyes longed to pierce the screen of
foliage that hid the hill from sight. She had not a doubt that he was
there; and, at the same time, she felt the madness of her certainty.
She arrived. Her glance at once swept the rocks. He was there.
She was on the point of throwing him handfuls of kisses, or else of
kneeling down and stretching out her arms to him across space, but she
saw him running down the slope and she herself started running towards
him, as fast as she could.
She arrived all out of breath at the bottom of the garden, broke down
the little wooden gate, which was slow in opening, and sprang into the
road at the moment when Guillaume crossed the bridge:
“Gilberte!”
“Guillaume!”
They assured themselves with a glance that nothing was changed in either
of them and then silently followed the road that skirts the Varenne.
They dared not speak, overcome with the importance of the words which
they were about to pronounce. Besides, excitement gripped them by the
throat.
Thus they arrived at Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau, the old Norman chapel which
is so prettily situated on the river-bank.
Leaning on the balustrade above the water flowing through the arches of
the bridge, they revelled in the delight of dreaming side by side. Then
Guillaume said:
“It was more than I could bear. I wanted to see you, if only for a few
minutes ... and to gather fresh courage....”
She asked, in a voice that did not sound like her own:
“Then ... you are going back?...”
“I intended to ... but I can’t now.... I can’t now....”
He continued, almost in a whisper:
“It’s not weakness. But I am seeing you; and to see you is to see things
and ideas as they are. You flood them with the light which is in you and
which springs from you. Yes, I tried to escape the temptation and I had
a wild desire to work in solitude, so as to achieve the wealth and fame
that would have permitted me to marry you. And now ... and now I see
that it is all madness. Why suffer uselessly? Let us struggle together,
Gilberte. I can do nothing without you ... I am too much in love with
you.”
“And your scruples?” she asked, maliciously.
“What do wealth and poverty matter? They are words to which I was able
to attach a certain value when away from you in writing to you. But,
when I am near you, it seems to me that they mean nothing. A man has no
right to order his life by such empty phrases.... Oh, Gilberte, you put
everything in its right proportion, you are truth itself, your love
gives certainty and peace! Such as I am, I am worthy of you, because you
love me....”
She gave him her hand. He asked:
“You are not angry with me?”
“For going away, Guillaume? No, I was so sure that you would come
back!”
IX
AFFIANCED
On the next afternoon, Adèle burst into the room where Gilberte was
sitting after lunch:
“M’am, there’s Mme. de la Vaudraye and her son turning into the square.
Am I to let them in?”
“Yes, certainly, I am expecting them.”
“Then it’s true what Mme. Duval says, that you’re going to marry M.
Guillaume, ma’am?”
“Well, suppose I am?”
“Oh, as far as M. Guillaume’s concerned, I’ve nothing to say! But Mme.
de la Vaudraye as your mother-in-law! If you want to know, ma’am, I’d
rather....”
The front-bell rang; and she went to the door looking very cross.
Gilberte shot a glance at the glass over the mantel-piece, pushed a curl
into place and nervously made a change in the flowers in the vases,
bunches of roses which she had gathered herself. Adèle showed in the
mother and son.
Mme. de la Vaudraye was radiant. A moment before, in the main street,
the mere sight of her silk dress, her ceremonious walk and her
triumphant expression must have told the inhabitants of Domfront the
exact nature of her errand.
She entered with the ease of one who is quite at home. Her way of
sitting down showed that she was definitely and blissfully taking
possession. There was none of the stiffness, none of the preliminary
commonplaces that usually mark this sort of interview. Mme. de la
Vaudraye was much too eager to come to the point:
“My dear Gilberte, I wish to ask your hand for my son Guillaume.”
All their love, all the unspeakable happiness of their souls, all their
gratitude, all their faith in the future was contained in the glance
exchanged by Guillaume and Gilberte. Nothing remained of the irritation
which his mother’s air of victory caused him, nothing remained of the
anxiety which the other felt at this solemn hour.
Mme. de la Vaudraye did not even wait to hear the answer.
“First of all, my dear child, let me speak to you as a friend and as a
woman of experience, who knows only too well, by what she herself has
been through, that happiness in married life is based upon material
prosperity. You know, don’t you, how Guillaume and I are placed as
regards money? On the death of my poor husband....”
Guillaume rose and walked to the open window, as though bored beforehand
by what was coming. Gilberte felt very much inclined to join him and to
leave Mme. de la Vaudraye to fight out with herself the question of the
material prosperity on which married bliss is based. But the older
woman’s imperious eye nailed her to her chair; and, nodding her head at
intervals, by way of assent, she had to listen to a long speech in which
strange phrases like separate and common property, joint estate and
settlements kept on recurring.
“That will do nicely,” she said, with an air of deliberation, though she
did not understand a single word of what was said.
“Are we agreed?”
“Quite, madame.”
“Well, children, kiss each other and bless you!”
Guillaume stepped forward and his outstretched arms closed round
Gilberte. He kissed her forehead, kissed her eyes. She released herself,
blushing, and said:
“It is my first kiss, Guillaume.”
He felt a momentary bitterness:
“Your first ... from me.”
She smiled:
“A girl must not receive a kiss from any but the man she is engaged to
... and are you not the first, the only one?”
“What do you mean, Gilberte?”
“I mean, Guillaume,” she said, in accents throbbing with her heart’s
gladness, “I mean that I am not a widow, that I have never been married,
that I called myself a married woman in the hope of escaping attention
and that no such person as Mme. Armand exists.”
Guillaume was trembling with emotion. He understood, yet refused to
admit the truth, so great would have been the anguish of a mistake:
“No, no, I dare not believe it ... you, a girl, unmarried!”
“What is there so extraordinary in that?”
“Oh, Gilberte!”
He had seized her hands and stood gazing at her in ecstasy.
She whispered:
“I was sure that you would be delighted.”
“It is something more than delight. You seem to me even more beautiful
and even more innocent and sacred. I do not love you any better, but I
love you differently.”
And he continued:
“Is it really possible? Is there no one in your past? Is there not even
that shadow on my happiness?”
“My whole past is you, Guillaume.”
Mme. de la Vaudraye came up to them. They had forgotten all about her;
and her appearance gave them an impression that was all the more painful
inasmuch as the sudden gravity of her features was in direct contrast
with their own rapture. She said to Gilberte:
“If Mme. Armand does not exist, then whom is my son marrying?”
“Well, Gilberte....”
“Gilberte whom?”
“Gilberte Me,” replied the girl, trying to speak playfully, but
half-uneasy at heart.
“Come, child, that’s not enough. You must have a surname?...”
“I suppose so....”
“What was your father’s name? Your mother’s?”
“I don’t know.”
Mme. de la Vaudraye drew herself up to the full length of her angular
figure. It was as though she were learning some terrible event, a
catastrophe. Gilberte caught sight of Guillaume’s pallor and suddenly
understood what she had never even half-realized, the danger of her
irregular position where a woman like Mme. de la Vaudraye was concerned.
She shook with terror.
Guillaume interposed gently:
“Don’t upset yourself, Gilberte. I need not say how little importance I
attach to all this; but mother does not look at things from my point of
view. Let us hear the facts.”
Gilberte, without entering into details, told of the death of her
mother, the loss of the family-papers and the whole chapter of accidents
which had prevented her from penetrating the mystery that surrounded
her. As she went on, her voice lost its assurance. All this story,
which, until then, she had simply regarded as a source of petty worries,
now, under Mme. de la Vaudraye’s stern eye, appeared to her the
abominable story of a worthless creature. To be without a name! She felt
as much ashamed of herself as though they had made the unexpected
discovery that she had an ear missing, or a piece of one cheek. And yet,
in the silence that followed on her recital she sought in vain for the
crime which she had committed, for the crime of which she was held
guilty.
“Well, mother,” said Guillaume, “there’s nothing serious in that.”
“Nothing serious!” sneered Mme. de la Vaudraye.
All her little middle-class, provincial feelings were outraged by this
unforeseen revelation. The pride of the La Vaudrayes cried aloud within
her. What would people say at Domfront if a La Vaudraye married a girl
without a name, a foundling, an adventuress, in fact! She pictured the
tittletattle, the sidelong allusions, the condolences with which she
would be overwhelmed.
“My poor friend, how very unpleasant for you!... Of course, I knew there
was something suspicious about her, for, after all....”
And they would say, among themselves:
“No name? Nonsense! When people haven’t a name, it’s because it’s to
their interest not to have one, because they are hiding their real
name.”
She did not take the trouble to put it politely. Bluntly, she declared:
“The marriage is out of the question. It will not take place.”
Guillaume protested indignantly:
“Out of the question! And why, pray?”
“Can’t you see that for yourself? I’m surprised at your asking!”
“I insist on knowing, as Gilberte’s affianced husband.”
“Gilberte’s husband! People don’t marry....”
“Silence, mother!”
He was standing before her, with his features convulsed. Another word
and he would have closed her lips by mean force. She was afraid of him.
He went on, dropping his voice:
“You are right, we had better not continue this explanation in her
presence. Any words other than words of veneration I look upon as an
insult to the girl I love.”
He pushed her towards the door sternly. But Gilberte barred their road:
“No, Guillaume, not like that.... If we must part, let it not be with
angry words.... I love both of you too well, yes, both of you, madame,”
she declared, in the voice that no one could resist.
Her gentleness was stronger than Guillaume’s violence. He made no
further movement. Mme. de la Vaudraye allowed herself to be led back
into the room. Gilberte made her sit down and knelt beside her:
“Act as your conscience tells you, but, please, without any bitterness
against me.... Whatever you decide to do, do not let me lose your
affection.”
There may have been a sort of revenge on Gilberte in Mme. de la
Vaudraye’s unbending attitude. She rejoiced to see this child, who had
always dominated her by her goodness and candour, on her knees before
her, while she, the judge, looked down from her moral pedestal and put
her to confusion from the heights of her respectability.
She did not reply. Gilberte continued:
“You remember our walk, a little while ago, when you showed me the
former boundaries of your property.... Well, I bought it all up ... in
order to give it back to you. I hoped to bring you back here, to this
house which belongs to you. Everything is yours, you would have managed
and disposed of everything, you would have been the absolute mistress,
answerable to no one, you would have resumed your proper place at
Domfront, the Logis would have become what it used to be....”
A gleam flashed through Mme. de la Vaudraye’s eyes, but she restrained
herself. The same inflexible will contracted her face into a hard and
stiff mask. Coldly, she said:
“I am exceedingly sorry that all these fine plans cannot be realized,
but it is not my fault.... Make enquiries.... Who knows ...? Perhaps you
will succeed in finding out the indispensable truth.”
Gilberte, in her despair, was nearly flinging her arms round her neck
and saying:
“Stay here, please.... Be to me the mother whom I have lost.... I will
love you like a daughter....”
But Guillaume prevented her:
“Why humiliate yourself, Gilberte?... If my mother will not consent....”
“Well?”
“Well, are we not free?”
“No, Guillaume,” she answered, firmly, “I will not marry you except with
your mother’s entire approval.”
He turned pale and murmured:
“But ... we shall see each other....”
“We shall not see each other. We can only see each other by stealth; and
that is unworthy of us.”
“Suppose I meet you....”
“I shall not leave the Logis.”
“But....”
“We will wait, Guillaume. Am I not your promised bride?”
He bowed. His mother went out. He followed her.
And Gilberte felt as though she had never been so lonely in her life.
X
THE DESERTED HOUSE
Next day, Gilberte received the following letter from Maître Dufornéril,
her solicitor at Dieppe:
“MADEMOISELLE,
“I have just received your telegram asking me where we stand in the
matter of our enquiries. I have already given you the information
which I obtained regarding your life and that of your parents at
Liverpool, although this, unfortunately, told us nothing new. M.
Kellner, which was the name under which your father made his
fortune at Liverpool, left none but pleasant memories behind him in
the commercial world of that city. On the other hand, no one knew
anything of his private life or of his antecedents. It was not
even known that he was married; and this fully bears out what you
told me of the retired existence which your mother and yourself
used to lead.
“I was therefore obliged to pursue our investigations to Berlin,
which takes us six years further back. Your father at that time
called himself M. Dumas. And here we have evidence that a fire
broke out on the 15th of October 18--in the warehouse of M. Dumas,
a bonder of Anjou wines, in the Frischwasserstrasse. Among the
rooms completely destroyed was that which M. Dumas, who was at the
same time a general agent, used as an office in which to see his
clients, most of whom were countrymen of his own. M. Dumas made an
affidavit from which it appears that all his papers were burnt.
“On this side, consequently, we arrive at a very unfortunate
certainty: your family-papers are no longer in existence; that is
clear. We have therefore to trace your parents back to the time of
their departure from France. Once we have done this and discovered
the town in which they used to live, it will be easy, by
advertising, to find out who you really are.
“Your father had in his employment, in Berlin, a Frenchman of the
name of Renaudeau, whom he appears to have trusted absolutely and
to have treated, according to the neighbours, as a friend of long
standing. When he left Berlin, he made over his business to
Renaudeau. Next year, Renaudeau went bankrupt. But he is believed
to be at Hamburg. I have written to the French consul there; and I
will let you know as soon as I hear from him.”
Day after day went by, days like those which followed on her arrival at
Domfront. Gilberte once more became the recluse to whom none had access
save the poor and destitute of the countryside; and, though they still
spoke of her as _la Bonne Demoiselle_ of the Logis and blessed her for
her charity, it might well be that they no longer took away with them
that impression of comfort which they welcomed no less than the alms.
How could she have consoled them, she who herself was yearning for
consolation?
However, she did not give up all hope. Gilberte had one of those rather
passive natures which, in happy hours, overflow with generous gladness,
but which, at times of trial, fall back upon themselves and live in that
kind of quiet contemplation which is as it were a patient expectation.
Mastering her sorrow and checking any signs of rebellion or distress,
she appeared less sensitive than others to the most cruel blows with
which fate overwhelmed her and, through every obstacle and every
vicissitude, she pursued her inward dream, sad or joyous, bright or
gloomy, but always built up of love and kindness.
The most appalling time was the close of day. Night fell late at that
time of the year; and it would have been sweet indeed to go down to the
summer-house after dinner. She had not a doubt but that Guillaume was
regular in his attendance at their former trysting-place. He must be
stretching out his arms to her now, calling her, entreating her,
reproaching her: oh, the torture of not being able to go to him!
She never ceased thinking of him. The memories of their common past
formed the only charm of the present; and, by one of love’s illusions,
she made her own memories begin on the very day on which Guillaume’s
began. And so she remembered the minute when he had caught her raising
her mourning-veil in the garden by the ruins. She remembered the moment
when, hiding behind a curtain, he had come near to her for the first
time. Had she not always loved him? Why had she, from the first and
despite Guillaume’s deliberate rebuffs, sought to tame him, as Mme. de
la Vaudraye called it, and to win his liking? Why also her impulse of
friendship towards the mysterious unknown?
Gilberte took little or no heed of what the town said of all these
happenings, having asked Adèle not to tell her: an order which the
unfortunate servant found great difficulty in obeying! Domfront was
bubbling and seething with comments! For, after all, there was this
undeniable fact: in the sight of the whole world, as everybody could
bear witness, a formal proposal had been made for Gilberte’s hand in
marriage; and it resulted in a breach between the La Vaudrayes and Mme.
Armand. A complete breach! For they no longer even saw one another. And
the inexplicable thing was that, since that famous afternoon, Mme.
Armand had not once left the Logis.
What was underneath it all? From which side did the breach come? A score
of contradictory versions went the round of the town, but none of them
bore the marks of indisputable authenticity upon which the
ever-scrupulous world insists before accepting a piece of gossip as
fact. As for Mme. Duval, she was in a desperate plight. Pressed with
questions, she was reluctantly compelled to admit that she knew nothing.
After the first fortnight, Gilberte, who dared not walk in her garden,
ventured to go out once or twice, but only at times and in directions
where she ran no risk of meeting people. Generally in the early morning,
she would slip out by a side-door and make her way down to the river by
the most shady and roundabout paths of the wood skirting the Logis.
Her almost daily destination was the little chapel of
Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau. It was here that she had had her last interview
with Guillaume. It was a peaceful spot, where she loved to dream. One
day, when she was coming back by a rambling way, she passed the house
which was once tenanted by those Despriols who had brought about M. and
Mme. de la Vaudrayes’ ruin. The rusty bars of the gate seemed crumbling
to pieces. A tangle of weeds and brambles overran the garden. The front
of the house was cracking; the slates of the roof were green; the
windows were full of swallows’ nests. Everything spoke of desertion and
neglect. Nevertheless, Gilberte felt drawn to it.
The gate resisted her efforts and she walked round the garden-wall,
feeling sure that she would find a door near a corner which she saw a
little way off. She did find one; and it was open, as was the door at
the top of the steps leading up to the house.